Roaring

by Lindsey Duga

  Gus stared at me through his thick lenses for a long time before he blew out a harsh breath. “So what do you need from me?”

  “I’ve got to get in to see Gin tonight. Do you think you can arrange it?”

  Gus folded his arms and scowled. “Short notice, but I can make a few calls. Mind you, I can only get you through the door. You’ll have to do the rest.”

  “That’s all I’ll need.”

  Gus grunted and returned to his sewing machine, inspecting the stitches he’d just made and their tiny perfect lines. “So why are you still here?” he asked.

  I crossed over to his sewing table and set the briefcase next to the half-made dress.

  “What’s this?” he asked, pulling the briefcase toward him.

  “The gold letters on the side: BKH. Ring any bells?”

  Gus squinted at it for a good thirty seconds before he shook his head. “Can’t say that it does. But if it’s from New York, that’s probably why. Where’d you get this?”

  “Pulled it off a manticore after us.”

  Gus cocked a brow. “A manticore, eh? Nasty piece of work.”

  “Not for me,” I said. It was meant to be honest, not arrogant. A manticore’s poison, like so many other magical monster ailments, didn’t affect me. I’d…gone through a lot to ensure that.

  “You mark my words, young hunter,” Gus said, leaning over his work and pointing to me. “You’ll be in a ring with a monster that you can’t knock down one day. And it will be too late. Then I’ll be standing over your cold corpse, saying I told you so.”

  “Thanks, Gus, I love our little talks.”

  He waved me out of his back room. “I’ve got calls to make. Go buy something.”

  Four hours later, I was still waiting on Eris. In that time, I’d used Gus’s quarters to bathe and change into a new suit that Gus himself had tailored. Hidden in one of the suit pockets was a slip of paper with the password for the speakeasy I’d need for tonight. Using a government-issued lighter I carried but rarely used, I burned the paper and brushed the ashes off my hands.

  The clock on the shop’s wall read half past ten when I heard sounds from the stairs behind the side door that led to the Murdeenas’ apartments.

  “Well come on, child.” Belva clicked her tongue, summoning her like she would a pet poodle.

  I stood, straightening my suit, about to tell Belva she’d cost us precious time, when Eris emerged from the darkened stairs into the boutique’s light, and all words died on my tongue.

  Eris’s auburn hair had been washed and styled into finger waves and bunched and pinned below her ears and around her neck. Tucked into the folds of her curls was a simple yet elegant feather hairpin and her makeup was light, accentuating her blue eyes and painting her lips in a subtle pink hue. Her flapper dress was a soft cream, closer to white than peach, and it sparkled and shimmered at the slightest movement.

  As I’d been waiting I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of dress Belva would choose for Eris. I’d imagined the usual fashion—dark, rich colors, like plum or emerald, maybe even a solid slinky black, since that seemed to be popular among young flappers. But I should’ve known better. Belva was legendary for finding the right attire for anyone—and it involved her seeing beyond the limitations of things like past and present fashions.

  She’d looked within Eris.

  And what she found was an angel.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Siren

  “Colt got your tongue?”

  Belva chuckling at her own joke made the spell break. Both Colt and I had been staring, speechless, at each other for an unknown amount of time. I wasn’t even sure who her question had been directed to.

  I dipped my head to hide the flush on my cheeks as Colt tilted his upward, rubbing the back of his neck.

  Stepping into the light of Belva’s boutique had been like stepping onto a stage—I felt woozy, dizzy, and a little blinded. Not blinded by lights, but by the young federal agent standing before me, dressed smartly in a well-cut pinstripe suit and a dark fedora.

  He stared at me in a way that made my skin feel warm and tingly like my whole body had just been doused in giggle water.

  “Well, my job is done. You two get going before you fog up the windows.” Belva pushed me forward, her hands still clamped on my shoulders.

  Her push, coupled with the new heels on my feet, made me stumble forward, but Colt caught me by the elbows. “Careful,” he murmured. He ducked his head, looking into my eyes from under the rim of his hat. “You look beautiful, Eris.”

  From my chest to the roots of my hair, I flamed with heat, and sweet jazz pumped through my heart. It was akin to the feelings in The Blind Dragon—only stronger. And when I realized that, I quickly wanted to shut them off.

  He’s a grifter, Eris. Don’t let him con you again.

  I dropped my hands and turned toward the storefront window, another part of me fighting valiantly against the advice. Yes, but one who turned his back on everything for you.

  Looking out into the Chicago night, I saw windows glowing yellow and heard shouts of laughter and blasts of trumpet players on street corners trailing through the corridors of the skyscrapers, carried on by its legendary wind. I imagined the clubs and the smoky rooms hidden within those very tall buildings and wanted nothing to do with them.

  Pressing my fingers against the glass, its chill rippled through me, and I shivered. As if in response, a heavy fur coat dropped onto my shoulders. I found Colt in the glass’s reflection. Our reflected gazes met and a quiet understanding passed between us.

  We were about to enter a drum full of monsters and vodka-soaked chaos, and we needed to rely on each other to get out alive.

  “All right, you kids,” Belva’s voice called from the back of her boutique. “Hurry up now, and make whoopee. The night is still young—but she won’t last for long!”

  Colt worried about any BOI agents stationed in Chicago noticing and tailing the stolen jalopy so we left the briefcase with Belva and took a taxi further into the heart of downtown Chicago. As the car ducked and wove through the busy nighttime streets, Lake Michigan peeked through buildings. Colt fed the driver directions and, in a matter of minutes, we were standing on a street corner with a single gaslight hanging overhead. The rest of the street was well illuminated, but this one seemed significant somehow—as if it was the first of its kind. Created a century ago, it stood for one hundred years, the product of a different era—no place for it in the modern world. And yet here it still stood.

  In my fur coat, I wasn’t cold at all, but I couldn’t stop the shivers that raced through me every few minutes. Trembles not from the biting wind, but the fear of real bites in this seedy Chicago netherworld.

  Colt started forward, tugging my arm gently along, and I followed.

  He spoke softly under his breath. “The minute we get into the Cerberus Club they’ll likely separate us.”

  My steps faltered and I hurried to keep up with Colt’s lengthy stride. “Why?”

  “The owner knows me and doesn’t trust me. The last time I was here I took out one of her favorite bodyguards—a minotaur by the name of Charlie Wade. I’m sure she’ll likely take you as collateral…and you need to let them.”

  Glancing at the skyscraper that seemed to hold up the ceiling of dark clouds, I licked my lips and forgot that I was wearing lipstick. It tasted waxy. “You want me to use my voice on them.”

  “I want you to protect yourself. If you use your voice, you can make them think they’re in charge while you have all the cards.”

  I tried to fight the scowl on my face. “I’m not very good at poker.”

  “That’s because you show all your emotions on your face. Eris, listen to me—” Colt stopped, squeezing my arm against the warmth of his chest. “This place will be crawling with monsters. The Cerberus Club is li
ke a safe haven for them. Where they can be themselves. You’ll see things and you can’t let them get to you. But you have to remember, you’ll be the most powerful creature there. They can’t do anything to you that you don’t want them to.”

  I’ll be the most powerful creature.

  I almost wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it. I’ve never felt powerful in my life. Not even when I forbade men from touching other women. I felt vengeful and angry, but not strong. And then later I’d feel disgusted with myself.

  If Colt was talking about this like a game of poker—I would drop all the cards.

  “You don’t believe me,” he stated quietly.

  I looked up then. Half his face was bathed in shadows, the other half illuminated by the gaslight behind us. His warm breath came out in clouds of steam.

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “Is it because I conned you before? That was a job. I was trying to make sure that the lost siren wasn’t…evil. You’re not evil. I know that now.”

  His dark eyes pulled me in, and I almost confessed to him all my insecurities. All my beliefs that I was, in fact, evil. This siren’s pearl that made me so powerful, so desirable, made me feel like a walking plague. Like sin personified—lust, envy, pride, wrath, gluttony, sloth, greed.

  And yet, here on this cold, dark night, where monsters danced beneath us and drank beyond brick walls, he gave me hope. Just like he had when I’d thrown my arms around his neck and wept.

  Don’t ever speak.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat and pulled my fur tighter around me. “Just tell me what I need to know about this…this Cerberus Club.”

  I started walking again, and with our arms linked, he followed as a result.

  He talked rapidly, his voice low and fast, but I caught every word. Every syllable spoken in his rich baritone.

  “A bouncer is going to grant us entrance and then we’ll probably be found within the first five minutes. If they take you, it will be to another room away from the rest of the drum’s chatter. But once I get the info I need from Gin, I’ll come find you and we’ll get out of here. In and out. It should be simple.”

  Should be.

  “Who is Gin?”

  “She’s the owner of the Cerberus Club.”

  “Is she a monster?”

  “She is.”

  I waited for him to tell me what she was, but silence passed between us, the only sounds the music of Chicago’s nightlife and the beat of our footsteps.

  “Well, what—”

  A metal clang from below interrupted me, and I sucked in a breath. To our right, a staircase had descended into darkness, ending with a single red light at the top of a metal door.

  It was like the staircase down to hell itself.

  A large man wearing suspenders and a bowler hat, his bulging biceps straining against the white fabric of his shirt, leaned against the door. His hat was pulled low over his eyes and he tilted his chin down as Colt and I took the steps toward him.

  “Password?” the man grunted in a thick Scottish brogue.

  “The Fall of Bellerophon,” Colt answered.

  The large man stepped to the side, and we were granted entrance. Colt pushed the door open, and we entered the Cerberus Club.

  It really was like walking into Lucifer’s kingdom. Immediately I wanted to shed my fur coat as the heat of bodies pressing against the dark cement walls of the speakeasy threatened to strangle me. We stood on a balcony looking out over a dance floor littered with oliver twists, swinging their hearts out to the jazz band that played on the extravagant stage directly opposite to us. Dim electric lightbulbs hung from the ceiling, shaking and trembling with the blasts of clarinets and saxes and the pounding keys of the pianist—playing like The Lion himself. A long bar ran the length of the speakeasy, packed with patrons all hanging on the edge, shouting their drink order and waving mazuma in the air for the harried bartenders.

  At first glance, it looked like any other city nightclub, extravagant and bigger than most, but normal.

  But then I picked up on flashes of abnormal.

  A woman in a red flapper dress had dark emerald locks of hair, writhing and twisting around her shoulders. It took me a second too long to realize what they were—live serpents. A man with bull horns protruding from his temples sat on a lone barstool, nursing his sixth glass in front of him. Another man danced with a dame whose whole arms and legs were covered in bluish-green scales reflecting the yellowish electric light. The singer up on the stage crooned into his mic and swayed with the beat of his jazz ballad, feathers falling to the floor from his arms like he was a cat shedding hair.

  I pressed my hands to my mouth as sweat broke out on the back of my neck.

  Monsters. Here, there, everywhere.

  I closed my eyes, swallowed, and lowered my shaking hands to my sides. Before I had another moment to collect my wits, a young woman with a black bob came up beside us. I did a double take. Her eyes were feline—yellow irises and black slit pupils. A lion’s tail curled around her waist and flicked Colt’s elbow, and when she opened her mouth to talk, sharp fangs glistened behind rouge lips.

  “Welcome to the Cerberus Club,” she purred—quite literally—her eyes darting up and down Colt’s tall frame. “May I take your coat and hat?”

  As Colt reached for his fedora to hand to the feline-girl, I shrugged out of the fur coat. It had been comforting to keep it around me, almost like a coat of armor, but now it was much too hot and it would be hard to move in.

  She handed Colt a token with a number on it in return, gave a little bow, and backed into the darkness.

  “What was she?” I asked.

  “A sphinx.”

  I wanted to ask exactly what a sphinx was, but the next song started and it was a loud one. The trumpet gave four short blasts and then the rest of the jazz band swooped in with a tune of their own design, but one the crowd had clearly heard before, because they gave a cheer and started into the Lindy Hop. Some dancers were better than others, but all were passionate—twirling and double-then-triple stepping.

  Then there were the darker parts of the dance floor where couples were twisted together in a way that would make Madame Maldu throw them out on the street. One man had a woman pressed against the wall, necking her, while her eyes rolled up into her head and her mouth parted in pleasure. The man tilted his head back and his tongue flicked over his lips—they were blood-red.

  Two flaming youths stumbled in front of us, both completely half-seas over. They were singing—if you could call it that—along to the melody of the band’s song. The one closest to us winked at me and reached to loop his arm around my neck. In less than a second, Colt had gripped the man’s shoulder with white knuckles. The boyo gave a shout of pain and twisted away. He seemed to sober up in that moment and stumbled down the steps, disappearing into the throng of dancers, his compatriot following.

  Colt dropped his hand to mine and intertwined our fingers. “C’mon,” he said gruffly.

  With the sound of the band, no one but myself would’ve been able to hear him. But I was clued into the timbre of his voice like radio towers tuned into certain frequencies.

  “Remember what I told you,” Colt said as we descended the stairs into the moving, shifting dance floor, “you’re the most powerful monster in this place.”

  “You’re an abomination, Eris.”

  I gasped suddenly, the words cutting through my mind like a dagger driven through my skull. Were they my own thoughts or the words of someone else from years ago? Darkness consumed my eyesight and I couldn’t breathe. My mouth was hot and my arm ached like someone had just injected something into the crook of my elbow.

  Then I blinked, brought back to the present by the scent of a smoking hearth. I tilted my head up, my chin brushing the fabric of Colt’s suit jacket. His body had melded against mine and we
stood, embracing, in the middle of the Charleston dancers. Lightbulbs trembled above us with the steps of a hundred feet swinging. A few women at the bar, all with snake hair, sipped on cocktails and sent curling blue smoke toward the ceiling with their cigarettes.

  I fisted his jacket and clung to him like he was a life preserver in the middle of the Atlantic.

  He moved his head back, bringing his hands to cup my cheeks, and stared into my eyes. “What happened?” His breath was hot, but not unpleasant—it reminded me of the warmth of a fire in the dead of winter.

  What had happened? I’d never had a flashback like that before. That missing time between the nuns at the orphanage and when Madame Maldu and I went into hiding—had it been from that time? When I’d gotten my pearl?

  Before I could answer, two large men emerged from the shadows and formed a barricade with their bodies between us and the stairs.

  The man on the right flexed his hand and his fingernails transformed into steel claws before my very eyes. The hair on his forearms grew until his whole hand, wrist, and up to his elbow was coated in fur. His nose and mouth rippled back into a snarl as they shifted into an elongated snout.

  A werewolf.

  “Colt Clemmons,” the werewolf said, his lips peeling back to reveal fangs as big as my pinky, “Gin would like to see you.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Agent

  “Good to see you, too, Carl,” I replied, forcing a smile. “How have you been?”

  “You killed my cousin, so dreaming every night of cutting your throat open.” Carl lifted his hand and ran his long wolfish tongue across his front claw. “And if Gin didn’t want to see you, I’d gut you right here, right now like a fish.”

  Eris shivered beside me and another pang of guilt and regret punched me in the gut. What had happened on the dance floor…I’d never seen anyone lose it like that before. She’d frozen and sucked in a breath like a drowning victim, then started shaking from head to foot. I couldn’t think of anything else to do other than wrap her in my arms and hold her.